Sometimes one says that a person is the soul
of a battle or of resistance. The Führer proves that this is more than a nice
phrase. It applies to him so well that one would have had to invent the phrase
if it had not already existed in the German language. Many a man has had power.
Many can give orders. And some have the inner greatness that justifies their
power and gives their orders power.

The Führer, however, lives in his grenadiers,
who are doing more than soldiers have ever done before them. He lives in the men
and women of his people, who with stubborn loyalty and confidence do the
impossible. They do not obey his power and follow his orders, but rather they
obey and follow an inner voice named Adolf Hitler. He is the conscience of the
German nation. All our virtue, bravery, good will, intelligence and sense of
duty follows his example. He is the voice within us that accompanies our deeds
and helps us overcome all obstacles.

What would we be without him? Spiritual
movements and historical developments follow their own laws. Wars come and go
like vast natural catastrophes. But it is not natural that a whole people rises
to meet its great test, bringing forth miracles of bravery and confidence to a
degree that no one could foresee, not even the best student of its nature. This
goes beyond the natural course of things. Here we see spiritual forces that have
neither historical nor biological foundations. The equation is simple: if one
removes Adolf Hitler's spiritual powers, if one cuts the bands of faith that
bind each of us to him, what is left? Only people who can do what is humanly
possible, who can only bear what humans can bear, and who one day will succumb.
It is not natural that after five years of such a war, after such sacrifices and
burdens, we still believe blindly in victory and fight and work more fanatically
and bitterly than we did on its first day.

The Führer does not speak to us often. It is
too seldom for us to attribute his power over our hearts to his direct personal
impact. But he is there, he thinks and works for us, it is as if we feel the
presence of an omnipresent will. The soldier in a difficult position who feels
he can no longer master the situation with his own strength finds comfort in
thinking of the man struggling with fate at his headquarters. He knows that
everything humanly possible will be done to help him. And he knows that even a
sacrifice, if it must be brought, is a meaningful sacrifice, part of his great
plan. He never feels alone. Nor are the people at home alone who suffer the
heavy burdens of air terror. They know that someone is there who knows their
needs. He does not only cover their needs with the cloak of his sympathy; he is
the one who is coining victory from their suffering.

Such blind trust places an enormous burden on
him! His omnipresent will that we believe we feel assumes that with superhuman
watchfulness he sees all, hears all, knows all that concerns Germany's fate.
Here we see the incomprehension of the world that speaks of deification and
tries to keep him in human bounds.

The poor fools! How can they know how happy we
are that he is the person he is! The simplest and most faithful among our people
worry about him. Is he sleeping? Is he healthy? What about his cares and
burdens? We know well enough that his day, too, has only 24 hours, and that he
is human. We realize that he does not know what grenadier Schultze and worker
Mьller are thinking at the moment. No, he cannot read their minds. But he knows
his people and their souls out of deep, almost prophetic knowledge. He knows
what he can ask of them and what they can give, and that explains what the
grenadier Schultze and the worker Mьller think. He feels their will and their
faith, just as we feel his. He needs no divine powers, for he feels in himself
the strengths of his great, brave people. It is a wonderful sense of
connectedness. And is not that enough?

He believes no less in us than we believe in
him. If someone claims that we deify him, they must also claim that he deifies
his people, that he trusts us more than is humanly possible. But he has always
been right in the past.

He seems to know us better than we know
ourselves. He certainly knows our shortcomings better than we do. They often
seem big to us, particularly those that affect our neighbors instead of
ourselves. Then we say: "If the Führer only knew, he would..." But the Führer
probably does know. He just does not think it very important. No, he does not
deify us, but he knows how we are. He knows all the characteristics of his
people and can play on us like a musical instrument. He does not use force, but
rather the fine sense of a gifted master.

Were this not the case, how could he bear the
seemingly unlimited burdens of responsibility he carries! Back during what
seemed to us happier days, we got used to calling him the greatest military
commander in history. Should we change our minds now that he has not recently
given us any great victories? Are we not thereby seeing the concept of military
commander in all too narrow terms that do not fit his titanic tasks?

The goal of a military commander is victory on
the battlefield, that and only that. We had great military commanders during the
First World War. They won many victories. They often had good reason for blaming
the victories they could not win on people and things outside their area of
authority.

Kluck did not lose the Battle of the Marne,
but rather the inadequate General Staff whose orders he had to follow.
Hindenburg and Ludendorff did not lose the great battle in France, but rather
those responsible at home. They weakened the army by allowing strikes and
domestic decay. The responsibility for losing the First World War did not rest
with the military commanders. They could wash their hands in innocence. They had
done their limited duty. The Führer's task, however, is not to win splendid
victories on the battlefield, but rather in every area, in every realm, winning
the final victory by every possible means. He cannot say I am winning in the
East; what happens in the West does not concern me. He cannot say I am winning
on the battlefields, what happens at home does not concern me. He is certainly a
military commander, and nothing that happens there casts any shadow over his
greatness. But beyond all his characteristics and significance, he is one thing
even greater — the Führer.

History will not ask if the commander Adolf
Hitler fought on the Volga or in the Carpathians, but rather if he gave his
people the victory of life, the Reich greatness, and its children a happy
future. The joy of a victor on the battlefield is a high point of human
experience. Even greater, however, is the ability to fight against human pride
by giving up outward successes, to wear out the enemy here or there by retreats,
to give up hard-won ground to gain time, to amass reserve armies instead of
laurel wreaths.

Imagine how many times during the great
defensive battles an army corps that seemed to be doing nothing could have been
moved elsewhere. What brilliant victories, what prestige they could have won,
what jubilation they could have given the nation, what happy moments they could
have given the commander and his soldiers. But the Führer resisted all the
temptations of the moment, conscious of his larger responsibility to the near
and distant future. He saves every man and every weapon he foresees he will need
for the great battle that is coming. He has factories working for the future,
even if it makes life hard for soldiers at the moment. He is holding back the
use of new weapons for the right moment, even though the troops and the homeland
would find the use of them encouraging today.

He could not do that if he did not feel the
heartbeat of the people, if he did not know what he could expect of his people.
He has more cares, greater responsibilities, and harder decisions than anyone
before him. If any of us had even a hundredth of his burdens, he would say he
could not carry them. Any of us would prefer to be a common soldier who faces
death, but only death, or a city-dweller who lives his hard life between air
raid alerts, or the housewife with her shopping difficulties.

But there is one man who cannot lay down his
burden, who carries a hundred times more than anyone else, who does not weaken
or falter, who does not confuse the forest with the trees. He is a granite wall
we need not worry about, who is everything that is good and brave and true in
us, who warms us with the glow of his great soul: the Führer!